Where can i found the lirycs of Penelope?

So beautiful. I need to learn this piece. I can't stop listening to it!

From our forthcoming album MONDEGREEN
Out March 24th 2014
Available from http://peelerrecords.bandcamp.com/

Quinta - Violin, Piano
Rebecca Waterworth - Cello
Caroline Weeks - Flute
Alice Eldridge - Cello

Spell

Alexandra Smither, soprano
Suzy Smith, piano

The image of a woman, waiting, is common in literature and it's intrigued me for a long time: hers is an act of endurance, tenacity, loyalty, and hope. It requires bravery, courage, fortitude, even defiance. And the woman who waits suffers, but most often silently: she is alone, perhaps vulnerable (or seen to be so), and must balance her soul's longing for a happy outcome with a more pragmatic realism. And always she fights depression and despair, a gnawing hopelessness that frays the edges of her sanity, and in so many of these stories, her tapestry or weaving.

In this song I imagine Penelope wandering the drafty, echoing "empty rooms" of whatever fortress or palace protected and imprisoned her during her long wait for the return of her husband and her son; she is surrounded by clamouring suitors and gossipy servants, but in her heart she keeps a lonely vigil beside the sea that took her family away and may, or may not, bring them back. And, unlike us – who know the story's ending – she has no guarantee that they will return. She's often praised (condescendingly) for her loyalty, for being a good wife. But how often do we risk imagining her silent battle against her own mind – against hopelessness? It's terrifying to contemplate; would we have that strength?

We still know war, we have always known war, and always it has taken a quiet, dreadful toll on those left behind. And this waiting takes other shapes: the long-distance relationship, the parent of the missing child, the widower... We always wait for those we love, the heartstrings stretched taut to breaking point across miles and years, oceans and continents, stronger than any deep-sea cable, but oh so frayed by worry, loneliness, and fear. 

In her day Penelope was just as modern as we are now, so here she sing music that is modern in its hybridity: classical, minimalist, jazz, pop – art song and torch song, for lover and loved.

Penelope (for soprano and piano)

Written for the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival 2014 
at MASS MoCA, conducted by Brad Lubman and played by Bang on a Can Fellows

Ascension

Ken Thomson, clarinet
Emileigh Vandiver, cello
Stuart Fisher, electric guitar
Jeff Kolega, percussion
Jani Parsons, piano/synthesizer
Tristan Kasten-Krause, double bass

Cirrus (live, Bang On A Can Summer Festival @ Mass MoCA, 2014)

Knotted Silk

A demo in one take. 

voice - Charlotte Mundy
guitar - Jordan Dodson

composed by Charlotte Mundy.

These Fragile Snowflakes is a piece for SATB choir and piano. It is based on the poem "Poetry on Lake Simcoe" by Desi Di Nardo, and was commissioned and premiered by Jubilate Singers of Toronto ON in May 2014. It was the winner of the 2015 U of T Choral Composition Competition.

This recording is sung by the MacMillan Singers on December 6, 2015 in MacMillan Theatre, Toronto ON.

Lara Dodds-Eden, piano. Hilary Apfelstadt, conductor.

These Fragile Snowflakes (MacMillan Singers)

Euphrosine's aria from Star-Shaped Biscuit, a semi-improvised opera conceived by David Toop.

Euphrosine's Aria from Star-Shaped Biscuit, a semi-improvised opera conceived by David Toop.

Composed for and performed by Quartet New Generation - recorder collective 
Susanne Fröhlich, Andrea Guttmann, Heide Schwarz und Petra Wurz (recorders)

Airlines for recorders/four perfromers

Composer-in-residence @ the Canadian Opera Company (2022-)
Composer-in-residence @ Glyndebourne (2019-22)

Photo: Daniel Alexander Denino

Penelope (for soprano and piano)

Cecilia Livingston

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